


To the Earth I Fell

by Lono



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4018618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lono/pseuds/Lono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d been temporarily barred from entering the storage room, but his determination and despair were ceremonial and he could hardly be expected to obey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Earth I Fell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minthegreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minthegreen/gifts), [Sundance201](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sundance201/gifts).



> This one goes out to my gurlz (sorry), **minthegreen** and **Sundance201**. Because they really should have discouraged me from watching this show and now they have to suffer the bad writing consequences.
> 
> Also, because they understand my omnipresent anxiety for Jemma Simmons.

* * *

  ** _To the Earth I Fell_**

* * *

  
When he spotted May and Bobbi coming out of the storage room, he slid to a stop from his hurried clip and ducked into a shadowed alcove.  They showed no sign that they’d seen him as they walked past his hiding place, even when Bobbi slowed to tighten a nut on one of her crutches.

He waited until they rounded the corner for his chance to scuttle across the dim hall, cringing at obtrusive _snick_ of the door latch under his hand. Glancing back, he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been caught out yet, and he could only hope no one would notice him right away on the security camera’s feed.  

He’d been temporarily barred from entering the storage room, but his determination and despair were ceremonial and he could hardly be expected to obey.

Finally, he turned to greet the blunt force of the stone’s taunting stillness.  


* * *

_**Three months:** the length of time it took him to exhaust himself and realize that he could not save her._  

* * *

None of the science he’d once held sacrosanct gave him the answers he’d needed. None of what he’d once cherished and delighted in had offered him even small comfort or a splinter of an idea.

In some ways, it was the epiphany of a new atheism, a far less welcome one for a man who’d never believed in any deity.  With science failing him, he had recognized the numbness settling over him. It was the lonesome void that a sanctimonious peer had once informed him he’d feel without the presence of religion in his life. He was no closer to finding Christ or Ganesh or any other god (if possible, he was even further away from it than before), but he suspected what he felt must be shared with the holiest of people as they heard the creeping knell of disillusionment.

His knell was a whisper in the back of his mind: _The way to save her died with her_.

In a weak moment, he’d said as much to Skye.

She’d crept into the room on the night he’d given up the ghost of science and carefully lowered herself to sit beside him on the ground. They hadn’t looked at each other, he hadn’t acknowledged her arrival.  Instead, they’d stared at the floating monolith before them.

It was only when she’d sent a small, quizzical tremor to the rock—and received nothing in return—that he’d spoken. Carefully not looking at her, he’d chipped off a loose chunk of rubber from his right trainer.

“And still, the rock considers itself above the song stylings of Carole King.”

“I don’t understand your old man music references,” she’d cracked half-heartedly.

For her, he tried. “Those three whole years between us have wizened me. The rock doesn’t feel the earth move under its… rocky bottom.”

Skye had sighed, a puff of air making her bangs flutter. “If Coulson would just let me take it somewhere isolated again, I could add a little more _oomph_ —“

“No,” he’d interrupted, now wrapping the tail of his shoelace around his finger. “You’ve tried that. It didn’t work. Now it should stay here.”

“You think you’ve got something?” Her tone betrayed a hope that she’d stopped vocalizing weeks ago.

The way his fingertip darkened to an angry purple should have squicked him out, but he’d just loosened the lace slightly, only to tighten it again as soon as his finger regained its normal circulation. “No. And I won’t.”

“Bullshit—“

“Jemma would have come up with the solution. She’s gone, so, clearly, there _isn’t_ one.”

Sniffing sharply even as she wound her arms around him, Skye attempted a bracing tone. “You ruminating about the sound of falling trees in empty forests makes me question your credentials as a quantum physicist.”

“I’m being serious, Skye.”

“So am I, Fitz,” she shot back, sharply enough that he finally glanced at her as she pulled away and jumped to her feet. “You say there’s no hope but you still come down here. What does it accomplish? I don’t believe you’ve given up. I don’t believe you’d ever give up.”

Sighing, he followed her up off of the ground, legs stiff from sitting so long. “I can’t keep expecting Coulson to allow this. I’ve been a burden before and I can’t make everyone else carry my workload while I obsess over something everyone but me _knows_ is a lost cause.”

She reeled back as if he’d slapped her. “Don’t even, Fitz. If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here. Yeah, maybe I've relied on you to find her, but only because I know you can do it. You’re just as smart as she is—“

“But I’m not!” 

“I don’t have time to research your IQ scores. If she is smarter, it’s not by much. And I know you’re terrified and you miss her—“

“I’m heartbroken, Skye!” he interrupted loudly. Pacing, he massaged his hand as it started to spasm. “I don’t just miss her. I _ache_ for her. My whole body hurts and I can’t grieve and heal if I’m telling myself that she’s alive when she obviously isn’t. People don’t typically survive being encased in a rock”

It wasn’t as if he’d said anything she hadn’t already known about his feelings for Jemma, but to hear him say it so bluntly had her flinching in pain for him. But only for the quick inhale-exhale of a breath. “And so you’re going let the thing that took her become her headstone and her shrine.”

His eyes burned and a hot tear slid down his cheek.

Shuffling towards him carefully, Skye’s arms returned around him. “And you and I both know, Fitz, that Jemma Simmons would never stand for a giant, alien tombstone.”

This surprised an ungraceful snort from him as he remembered Jemma speaking at the funeral service for an elderly faculty member at Sci-Ops who’d advised her occasionally. 

She’d been asked to do a reading, something the adjunct professor’s family quickly regretted. He could still remember the way his stomach hurt as he tried valiantly to keep his laughter to himself, along with his certainty that her diatribe about the poem “Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep” would have delighted the deceased wholeheartedly.  
  
“ _Well, if you’re going to be literal, his body_ is _there, but it’s really quite fleeting in the grand scheme of things. Decomposition in traditional casket burials_ does _take longer, but the acid content of the soil here would accelerate things a bit. I’d say it’ll be around 40 years before the bones dissolve fully.”_

Skye’s lips quirked as she watched him remember. She wasn’t familiar with the story, but she was familiar with Jemma Simmons.

Her chiming phone had her drawing away from their hug to glance at the screen. “I need to go. May wants to do some recon. Get some rest, Fitz, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.” she instructed, giving him a kiss on the cheek.  

He nodded and murmured, “Be safe, Skye.”

But he’d sat back down, staring at the stone and the way the fluorescent lights flickered off of its oily surface for several more hours, waiting for a sign that didn’t come.  


* * *

_**Two weeks:** the length of time it took Phil Coulson to notice that Leopold Fitz was exhausting himself and put a moratorium on his visits to the storage room.  
_

* * *

When Fitz’s conversation with Skye had spurred him to search with doubled efforts, it only took a shrewd observation from May to Coulson for the director to pull his engineer away from the taunting presence of the room and the Kree artifact.

Though Fitz had balked when he’d told him that it was off limits for the time being, Coulson could see now as he studied him that the younger man was clinging to threads. Unshaven, wild-eyed, he was slowly unraveling between his exhaustion, his despair, and his manic determination to find Simmons.

“Sir,” Fitz had fumed. “I politely ask that you reconsider. My other work is not suffering now. I've sorted things. But I have to continue my study of the stone.”

“We all are working on it, Fitz,” Coulson reminded him. “It won’t hurt for you to take time to regroup. We will find her. But you won’t do it if you’re so exhausted that you get sloppy.”

Fitz paced away, tugging at his close-cropped hair before striding back. “I can’t waste time,” he insisted.

Coulson shook his head, heaving a sigh. “That’s an order, Agent.” His tone wasn’t without compassion and a strain of its own that had been there since Jemma’s disappearance, but that did little to soothe Fitz.

He stormed off without giving his word or receiving a dismissal.  Habit had him striding down the back hallway towards the storage room, but the minute he reached the tempered glass door, he stared at the utilitarian glow from within and all at once felt a traitorous exhaustion slide under his skin, dance across his nerves, and weigh down his bones.

Slowly, he turned and trudged back the way he’d come, veering off when he got to the living quarters. He would sleep for a little while, he’d decided, and then he’d begin again. And again. And again. For as long as it took.  


* * *

_**Twelve hours:** the length of time Leopold Fitz slept, only to wake up clammy and gasping from a nightmare._  

* * *

The shakiness dissipated, only for him to be consumed by an irrepressible guilt that he could leave Jemma for half a day without trying to find her.

He only remembered that he’d been barred from the storage room when he spotted May and Bobbi coming out of it. He came to an abrupt halt before doing a quarter turn and ducking into a shadowed alcove.

They showed no sign of having seen him as they progressed towards his hiding place.

“My contact at the British Museum wasn’t any help,” Bobbi murmured, stopping to adjust a bolt on one of her crutches, “but she seemed more determined when she found out it concerned Simmons. Turns out our good doctor has made a bit of a name for herself with the museum staff, mostly because of the disparaging letters she likes to write them after every visit. Dr. Caruthers said something about them always being addressed to the ‘Department of Looting’.”

“And yet, they like her, I take it,” May said drily.

Bobbi smiled slightly. “They really do. Sounds like they take the letters in far more fun that I bet Simmons intends them.”

Fitz ducked his head, that familiar swale of emotions hitting his groggy body as he considered just how correct Bobbi was in her assessment. Jemma: the charming pain in the arse cheerfully dressing down people who deserved it and winning lifelong admirers in the process.

Amusement, sorrow, amusement, sorrow. It was a repeating wave of emotions that he couldn’t escape.

May and Bobbi continued on their way, the subject changing to the possibility of grilled cheese for a late night snack.

Stepping out of the alcove, he moved to the door. The screech of the stiff handle and the rattle of the inner latch had him darting his eyes around again. When no one appeared, he stepped into the room as he sucked in a fortifying breath. It had become a habit, when he came face to face with the floating artifact, for him to allow himself five seconds. Five seconds to acknowledge that even figuring out where to start drained him. The moment those five seconds passed, however, he’d get to work.

The fluorescent lights hummed, the door clapped shut behind him, and the stone remained silent and hateful.

Because he couldn’t have avoided it if he’d tried, he stared dead on at the stone. Though hatred for it seeped from his pores, he still scanned it carefully, looking for any changes.

There were none.

Giving a curt nod, he set to work.  


* * *

_**Three minutes** : the amount of time it took for everything to change. _

* * *

He moved over to the bank of computers and monitors set up along the right side of the room. Picking up a pile of printouts from the day’s work, he was unsurprised to see not even a blip of activity. The scribbled notes from his colleagues and friends in the papers’ margins bore the same, unsurprised frustration as ever, with no new ideas or suggestions for things they could try next.

Flopping the papers back on the desk, Fitz huffed out a thoughtful breath, turning to stare at the artifact. Later, he couldn’t recall what impetus had him moving to its glass enclosure and staring inside.

The impassive façade remained unchanged.

Until, abruptly, it did change.

The mass began to melt. Not the sudden disintegration to sloshing, furious waves he’d witnessed before, but, rather, oily matter dripping slowly to the floor of the enclosure. The viscous drops deliberately began to find polarity, oozing to form an amorphous blob. It shuddered and rippled, but it didn’t spread from its central point on the enclosure floor. As he watched, however, too stunned to run to find someone, the dripping stone-ooze fell more and more quickly and gather more and more precisely.

From there, it happened almost instantly.  Fitz had seconds to make out the shape of an arm, of a head, of a body lying on its side, a fetal curl to its spine; a wet, oily cousin to the molds taken of Pompeii victims.

He made out the figure’s face and was scrabbling at the door, shouting her name when the black liquid that formed her began to melt away again. His panicked scream caught in his throat when he spotted a patch of pale skin where the liquid had been.

His focus on her and only her meant that he didn’t startle when the opaque substance violently shattered away from her like shards of gelatinous obsidian. The droplets hissed as they hit the glass before bouncing off and reabsorbing into the half-formed stone that still floated above the woman lying prone beneath it. It churned and groaned, and Fitz’s bad hand spasmed when he redoubled his efforts to pop the huge padlock free of the enclosure’s latch.

When he finally got the lock open, he found himself hesitating.

 Though his instinct was to throw the door open, a chilling fear crept over him. His eyes flickered from her to the stone and back again. She hadn’t moved. What if she wasn’t _complete_ yet?

And then the stone begin and roil and heave, a sign that its disintegration is imminent. Somehow, he _knew_ that if he didn’t pull her out of there that instant, he’d lose her again. How he could have such primordial foreboding, he couldn’t explain, but all he could do was trust it.

Flinging open the door, Fitz threw himself inside, stooping to wrapping his arms around her torso and hauling her out of there. They cleared the enclosure’s glass walls and he set her unconscious form on the ground as gently as possible in a hairsbreadth of seconds. He whirled back around, body in an ungainly stumble/sprint back to door, shoving it closed and slamming the padlock shut just as the rock dissolved once more, creating the sloshy, violent tempest that could not escape its Plexiglas confines.

Fitz didn’t think he was being fanciful when the lurch in his heart told him that it wanted her back. It was enraged that it couldn’t reach her. This was enough shake him out of his study and turn back to where she lay. He hurried back, dropping to his knees and sliding to a halt beside her and his fingers over her pulse, feeling it skitter beneath his hand.

Though her small form quaked with shivers, her skin was warm to his touch and she was breathing without any distress. He knew he should call for help, but he couldn’t move until he found out if she was okay.

He would give her two minutes, he decided as he gathered her into his arms.

“Jemma. Jemma.” He whispered her name again and again, kissing her face, nuzzling at her cheeks, seeking some response to show him that she’d returned whole. No sign of the black ooze remained, though she was soaked with clear droplets, of water or something else, he couldn’t say.

When she shuddered again, curling around him, he realized for the first time that she was naked. Unable to bring himself to let go of her, what followed was an awkward undertaking of bracing her with one arm while he wriggled out of one cardigan sleeve and then repeating the process on the other side.

It was as he covered her with the jumper and set to work tugging her arms through the sleeves that she gave a violent jerk and gasped, her eyes flying open, glazed with panic.

“Jemma,” he murmured as soothingly as he could around a cracking voice. “Jemma, you’re safe. You’re home. I’ve got you.”

He continued to whisper words of comfort and uncharacteristic endearments to her as he pulled her firmly to him, trying to share his warmth with her. The sound of pounding feet overhead registered and his whole body uncoiled, shaking with ebbing adrenaline. Despite his jittering fingers, he quickly fastened as many of the cardigan’s buttons as he could up her back, humming a tunelessly to her as he worked.

“Fit—Fitz?” she gasped hoarsely, her teeth chattering.

He sagged over her even more before straightening abruptly. It wouldn’t do for him to blubber piteously while he tried to roll up the sleeves of his jumper for her.

“Yeah, Jemma,” he said, kissing her temple, her cheek, the base of her earlobe, anywhere he could reach. “I’m here.”

And then he wrapped himself around her as much as he could, tears dripping down his face when her shudders gave way to keening sobs against his neck.

It was how the rest of the team found them a moment later: Leo Fitz cradling Jemma Simmons in his lap in front of the Kree artifact’s enclosure, both weeping and mindless of it frothing violently behind them; mindless of everything but each other.  


* * *

_**Five Hours** : The amount of time it took for Jemma Simmons to be examined, poked, prodded, and, finally, quarantined. And for her to somehow, sneakily, underhandedly arrange a second quarantine bay for Fitz._

* * *

He stood at the clear wall of his designated playpen (none of the Playground residents thought he was nearly as funny as he did), staring at Jemma’s slack face and the way her chest rose and fell with each breath she drew.  Her face remained pale, her lips chapped, and the only color to her skin came in the form of the dark circles beneath her eyes.

She’d sat patiently through all of the poking and prodding that ensued after the team composed themselves enough to situate her on a gurney and wheel her into the lab. The tension Fitz had carried lessened more and more as doctors and other scientists swirled around Jemma. It dissipated to nearly unnoticeable levels when she began croakily issuing orders. A grin even fought itself loose from his lips when she’d politely, but loudly, asked Skye to run and get her some knickers. And maybe something more substantial than a backwards cardigan.

Though he’d balked at his own quarantine, he’d gone in willingly enough when May calmly pointed out that the only way he’d be allowed to stay in the lab long-term would be if he was there as a patient. And though he doubted he’d come down with a case of Killer Kree Croup, he’d acquiesced just so he could stay near to Jemma.

Now, as he watched her sleeping (a rare opportunity, that. She’d probably call him creepy for it later, too), he allowed grateful relief to swamp him.  She was safe. She was within arm’s reach—plexiglas walls notwithstanding—and she was still the strong, brilliant person she’d been before the Kree stone took her.

Strong, brilliant, and sad.

And that was why he stood there watching her instead of sleeping, though his body cried out for its own rest.

Jemma had come back ever sadder than she’d been before she left, and she wasn’t telling anyone what had happened. Not even Fitz, which smarted more than he could say.

“You aren’t going to help anyone if you die of exhaustion,” Skye called from across the now-quiet lab.

He spared a glance for her and then returned his gaze to Jemma. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he deadpanned.

Skye only rolled her eyes and moved over to the outside wall of Jemma’s quarantine bay.

“You did it,” she smiled at him.

“Did what?”

“Saved her,” she explained, looking for all the world like she’d have no patience for his obtuseness.

Fitz shook his head, not eager for undue credit. “I think we can firmly say Jemma saved herself.”

Waving away his words like an annoying fly, Skye continued to watch Jemma. “Joint effort. She made her way back from wherever, but if you hadn’t been in the room when you were, she’d be right back where she started.”

“If she did it once, she could do it again.” Heat crawled up the back of his neck.

“I believe it,” Skye shrugged. “But because of you, she won’t have to try.”

He nodded jerkily. “Well… I’d do it again, and more. I’d bring her back sooner.”

They stood there silently, watching Jemma. “Has she told you any more about what happened to her?”

Clearing his throat, Fitz pulled a multi-tool from his pocket and began fiddling with it. “No. She won’t tell me anything.”

Skye bumped her shoulder against his plexiglas. “She will. She has all of us she can talk to and hopefully she realizes that we will help her however we can.”

“I’m sure she does,” he agreed, though he wasn’t convinced she’d ever open up, if the Sad Simmons of yore was anything to go by. And this one was even sadder.

“She’ll be okay. And she’s so happy she has you,” Skye said, almost shy to be communicating effusive, squishy sentiments between her best friends.

Fitz’s heart jerked. “Oh?” he asked casually.

“She told me when I was helping her dress. She said you saved her, and that the way you helped her, made this way less traumatic than it could have been.”

The tips of his ears were red, he was certain. “I would do anything for her. But anyone would have done the same.”

“Skye’s right,” Jemma murmured sleepily. Her friends’ heads jerked around, but she’d hardly moved. She’d not even opened her eyes, though her breathing had changed enough to tell Fitz that she had, indeed, awoken.

“Of course I am,” Skye said cajolingly, but she beamed through the glass, first at Jemma, then at Fitz. “Right about what in this instance?” she added on, toying with her hair and feigning boredom.

Simmons struggled to sit up. Yawning enough for her jaw to crack, she raked her fingers through her hair before bundling her quilt around her shoulders as she blinked owlishly at them.  “You’re right that I wouldn’t have wanted anyone but Fitz with me when I got back.”

Skye shot a _See?!_  look at Fitz. “Yeah, it would make missions a bit awkward if Coulson had been the one to get an eyeful of you naked. Fitz’s going to be helping you out of your clothes eventually for reasons of the far lustier persuasion, so what better way to break the ice?”

“Does everything have to be sexualized?” Fitz moaned. “It didn’t even occur to me—“

“She’s teasing you, Fitz,” Jemma chided, a small smile quirking her mouth. “Of course it didn’t. You would never take advantage of anyone like that.” A thoughtful expression slid into place. “Though, she does have a point about it breaking the ice for later….”

Fitz broke into coughing, wheezing fit.

Ignoring his imminent demise, Skye turned back to Jemma. “Will you tell us how you escaped?”

Jemma’s smile slid away. Her dark eyes gleamed in the dim lab light as she nodded. “I don’t really know _how_ I figured it out. I wasn’t aware of much, wherever I was. But I kept seeing a glimmer of something.” She smiled, uneasily.  “I’m not even sure how, because everything was black around me. But still, I spotted it. It was like a pinprick. I crawled and climbed closer to it.”

“Crawled and climbed? On what?” Fitz asked.

She shook her head, shrugging helplessly. “It was exhausting. I’ve never wanted to give up as much as I did then.”

She looked so small, so devastated. Fitz swallowed, which he could wrap his arms around her and feel her solid against him. Instead he put a hand against the glass, hoping she understood it as a gesture so support.

She did, and her lips returned the barest hint of a smile. Sliding off of the gurney, she shuffled on sock-clad feet to the corner where Fitz stood on one side of her, Skye on the other. She put her hand up on the glass opposite his.

“It started out as pinprick, but it slowly got closer and I could see more. It…. It fought me, tried to pull me back down, but I kicked and hit and climbed and I got closer and closer. Until I was blinded by it, and I could see you,” she nodded at Fitz. “And I had to get to you, so I threw myself though whatever chasm I’d found.”

“And here you are,” Skye sniffled.

Jemma nodded, but she still looked at Fitz. “Here I am.”

He stared back at her, frozen under her shaky smile.

“I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t stay there,” Jemma continued, looking up at Fitz shyly. “Not when I owe my lab partner a dinner.”

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I just totally played the Steggy/Fitzsimmons parallel card. Maybe even shoehorned it in. I regret nothing. Which isn’t to say I won’t regret it all (including posting this) in the harsh light of day come tomorrow.
> 
> This is my first fic for anything outside of the _Sherlock_ fandom and the first thing I’ve written in five months or so. I’m painfully rusty on anything that isn’t technical writing for work so who knows what horrors lurk in here. Added to that, I am totally unversed in these characters’ voices. But it was fun to try! I hope it wasn’t too painful to read as a result!
> 
> The title is from Nina Gordon's "Tonight and the Rest of My Life" because sometimes, you just need to dredge up pop songs from your early teens.


End file.
